Reformers to Radicals

by Thomas Kiffmeyer

  Much more biting in its criticism, Depressed Area USA, in which the Council of the Southern Mountains took an active part, did attempt to provide a more comprehensive analysis of Appalachian poverty. According to the suggested story line submitted by CBS to the Council of the Southern Mountains, the report sought to develop the theme that, “while many can be accused, all of these people we see and hear are the victims of history, an oversight on the part of the body politic.” Rather than contrasting poverty in Appalachia and the Christmas spirit in more prosperous areas of the country, Depressed Area first showed the Clay County resident Odie Mills “accusing the school system of taking more than a year of her life,” followed by the faces of “local big wigs” claiming “‘We’re doing the best we can’” and local bankers revealing “that they are minions of larger banks in Lexington and Louisville, which set credit policy.” Though the script did not specify in what way the mountaineers were “victims of history,” it claimed that the problems in Appalachia lingered because of a national “failure of nerve” and “fear of risk.”20

  In the proposal submitted to the CSM, Depressed Area USA did not offer any tangible solutions. Rather, it focused on the problems and allowed locals to make accusations. Much like Christmas in Appalachia, Depressed Area called on all Americans to take responsibility for remedying the national oversight of Appalachian poverty. The implicit message was the need to educate Appalachians so that they might take part in the wealth and prosperity of the modern United States. This, of course, was the message of the Appalachian Volunteers.

  There was a second implication in Depressed Area that the Council openly exploited—the lack of leadership in the Appalachian region, as demonstrated by the report’s depiction of the “local big wigs” as powerless “minions” of outside forces. In contrast to those powerless flunkies, the Council of the Southern Mountains saw itself as the source of a renewed mountain authority. “The desperate region-wide material poverty and poverty of the mind and spirit and inadequate resource development throughout the entire Appalachian South,” Ayer wrote to the OEO, “is fundamentally based in a lack of specific and interrelated information, a lack of social and organizational ‘savvy’ and a lack of competent leadership in this new day as differentiated from the power structure group of so-called leaders under whose domination and control the situation came to be as it is.” Because of this dearth of local leadership, he continued, those involved in implementing the OEO’s community action programs (CAPs) must “come from outside the community.” Finally, he argued that only the Council was in a position to provide any reliable information on the conditions in Appalachia and that the OEO should consult it before approving any CAP there. Though Ayer claimed that he sought only to ensure that the OEO developed programs on the basis of accurate data, his argument that the Council “need[ed] to have the authority . . . to act as OEO’s emissary” in Appalachia clearly translated to a desire for control of federal dollars.21

  Interestingly, these harsh words about the “power structure” did not produce any fundamental alterations in the AV focus. The publicity that Appalachia gained as a result of the national news coverage was, however, a boon to the AV cause. Donations of all sorts poured into the region (and not just to the AVs), and the organization opened its doors to the flood of young Americans who wanted to do their part for the less fortunate. By this time, Appalachian Volunteer chapters existed on three college campuses outside the region: at Earlham College in Indiana, Queens College in New York, and Harvard University in Massachusetts. With the addition of the VISTA volunteers who filtered into Appalachia in early 1965, the War on Poverty exploded on eastern Kentucky. The Appalachia in Appalachian Volunteers now referred more to where the AV members worked than to where they were born—though most were still volunteers.22

  This transformation was intentional. Ayer suggested that the CSM attempt to attract sociology students from places such as the University of Wisconsin, Columbia University, Cornell University, and other “far flung campuses on which there are people orientated to and concerned about this area.” In addition, the AV staff member Gibbs Kinderman informed an interested student from Louisville that the organization was “most interested in involving colleges outside the Eastern Kentucky area in our work.” Before the spring was over, his wish was granted.23

  In late 1964, the Council’s assistant executive director, Loyal Jones, had “encourage[d] Peace Corps returnees to check with the Council” about working in the mountains following their overseas assignments. Further, he worked with the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries to find suitable “work camp experiences” for interested young people. This was but the beginning of a massive influx of nonnatives into the Appalachian Volunteers. In February 1965, Flem Messer began making arrangements for a church group from Elkhart, Indiana, to conduct a school project in eastern Kentucky, and, during the summer of that year, Beloit College in Wisconsin sent two female students to the Appalachian Volunteers through the school’s social service program. In November, volunteers from a student church group at Pennsylvania State University held a weeklong project at Quicksand Hollow, Knott County, while volunteers from Saint Pius X Interracial Council, located in Uniondale, New York, provided manpower for the Volunteers in April 1966. Not all the new volunteers, however, came from so far away. By 1965, University of Louisville students actively participated in the AV program. Nevertheless, extant in the Appalachian Volunteers files are letters to and from virtually every state in the Union either from individuals requesting information about the AVs or from the Appalachian Volunteers themselves seeking new volunteers and asking former students to return for yet another tour of duty. By mid-1965, the AVs were a national organization.24

  Not only were the Appalachian Volunteers more than willing to accept participants from outside the region; they also were ready to abandon that sense of selflessness that they originally hoped to infuse in the project. From Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, Bard College asked to send students to the Appalachian Volunteers so that they might gain knowledge that would supplement their classroom studies. Even certified teachers expressed a desire to spend time in the rural mountain schools. Representing a group of teachers in New Jersey, Richard Blass wrote to the Council about arranging a “teacher exchange” program between the rural instructors and those from the Northeast. Such a program, Blass argued, would be of great benefit to the Jersey children, who were very interested in learning more about the “romantic Appalachian area.”25

  Ironically, the Appalachian Volunteers’ overwhelming confidence in their own abilities prevented yet another group from turning the fight against want in the Southern mountains into a lab course for its students. Clarke Moses of Pomona College in Claremont, California, wanted to form a “social action seminar” in which students would work with reform efforts such as the Appalachian Volunteers and read prescribed texts, assigned by Pomona faculty as a supplement. This seminar, he believed, would successfully combine academics with actual experience. Responding to the proposal, the AV fieldman Thomas Rhodenbaugh informed Moses that his idea was an admirable one but that the Volunteer staff was the better judge of what academic work should supplement the “action” part of the course.26

  Rhodenbaugh’s response is interesting on many levels. First, he was open to the possibility of a group using mountaineers as research subjects. Second, he must have understood that the primary objective of the proposed seminar was not the improvement of the mountaineers’ condition but the education of the college students. Finally, his reaction to the professor’s attempt to control the reading material for his own class again illustrated how sure of themselves the Volunteers were and how they believed they were the ones most prepared to initiate change in the Appalachian coalfields.

  By the end of 1966, the Appalachian Volunteers began to suffer the consequences of both the national publicity and the changing composition of its work groups. After the Depressed Area film crew completed its work in Clay County, the coun
ty school superintendent, Malie Bledsoe, was so incensed that she refused to allow the Appalachian Volunteers to undertake any additional school renovation projects in her district. William Miller, a member of the AV Board of Directors, subsequently urged the AV staff to evaluate the methods used by the Volunteer groups to contact local officials. Many superintendents, he warned, were “disturbed at the Volunteers [for] ignoring them.” Ayer, somewhat uncharacteristically, believed that the “push” from the national media would lead only to progress in the region. “We cannot alleviate any of these great social problems by sweeping them under the rug,” he told an NBC reporter, “and if we offend some of the dominant ‘leaders’ in the area this may result in positive action which would not otherwise have been aroused.”27

  In spite of these early warnings, the Appalachian Volunteers continued to bring work groups from all over the country into the region. Three of these were from Earlham College, Wilmington College (in Ohio), and Queens College. Prior to the students’ scheduled arrival on January 29, 1965, the Wilmington Project was already in trouble with the AV staff because of an article that had appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal on January 20. In a letter written the same day the article appeared, Gibbs Kinderman chastised Tim Sword of the Wilmington College Appalachian Project because, as he saw it, the article implied that the Wilmington students sought “national recognition” for their efforts. Kinderman reminded the Ohioans that the AVs worked “with” and not for impoverished mountaineers. He also pointed out that there was no mention of the Council of the Southern Mountains in the article and that, as the agency that actually administered the AV program and sponsored the Wilmington group, the CSM had to be included in all statements issued about the project.28 Still concerned about its financial position and its fund-raising potential, the CSM wanted to maintain the level of visibility that it had achieved with Christmas in Appalachia.

  Putting this incident behind them, the Ohio students conducted a combination curriculum enrichment and renovation project at the Kerby Knob school in Jackson County. The work must have been more difficult than anticipated because the students failed to complete all they had hoped to do. They did, however, write to Otis Johnson, the superintendent of the Jackson County schools, requesting permission to return later and finish the job. Johnson refused the request. In a letter to the AV fieldman Rhodenbaugh, Johnson stated: “At our regular board meeting . . . the letter from Wilmington College requesting their return to Kerby Knob School to finish their job was refused by the board. The reason was because of all the unjustified publicity.” It is uncertain whether Johnson meant the earlier Courier-Journal article, but it is clear that one more superintendent began to curb Volunteer activity in his county.29

  The Queens College and Earlham College projects were also significant in that they spurred a change in AV operations. Taking place in the early spring of 1965 at Decoy in Knott County and at Wright-Watson in Elliott County, the Earlham College program adhered to the Appalachian Volunteers’ curriculum enhancement program to the letter. The twenty-seven Earlham students held dances and sing-alongs and presented dramatic skits and arts and crafts classes. They attempted to teach nutrition and health. They also served as teachers’ aides, instructing the local children in nearly every subject. According to the fieldman Bill Wells, few volunteer groups embraced projects with such energy. Unfortunately, this enthusiasm nearly ruined the project. Wells reported that the “zeal and almost revolutionary spirit” of the Earlham students stationed at Wright-Watson disrupted the daily routines of the community and the school. According to the local teacher, the volunteers were one step away from disaster because they had little regard for local sensibilities until confronted with their insensitivity. Bill Marshak closed his report to the AV staff with the cryptic statement: “Reminder that all people are human beings and are just like us.”30

  Though no reports or evaluations of the Queens College project are extant, a questionnaire used to prepare the New Yorkers for their summer visit to Appalachia remains. Though problematic—there is no indication who composed it or why—the language used provides insight into the participants and their perception of eastern Kentucky, illustrating the gap between the “monotony of daily routine” in the mountains and the “sophisticated culture” of New York City. Among other queries, project organizers asked whether students could endure “smelly clothes” and “do without washing for an extended period.”31

  Most interesting, however, were a series of preproject statements that questioned the rationale behind the project: “Tutorials [were] ineffective since the children will return to their inadequate education in the fall. Whose idea was this recreation stuff anyway? In a poor society recreation is irrelevant.” One student even declared: “Community development is a joke. Renovation programs cannot be accomplished with our limited resources, . . . and even if minimal achievements are accomplished they will not be maintained.” Certainly, recreation is not irrelevant, and even short-term improvements are just that—improvements. So one wonders why the New Yorkers made such statements. The prompts directed at the students were, most likely, designed to make them say that any improvement, no matter how small, was beneficial. In many ways, such a position was correct. Nevertheless, as future events would soon indicate, the direction of the Queens College project questions was more prophetic than rhetorical, foreshadowing the future of the entire AV program. Further, because it recognized the possibility of failure, however remote, it also suggests that cracks had formed in the AV foundation of overwhelming confidence and self-assurance.32

  That foundation, nevertheless, was still strong enough in 1965 to withstand the weight of the continued influx, in the form of the AV Spring Break and Summer 1965 projects as well as additional VISTA volunteers, of non-Appalachians. These three developments further undercut the notion of local people helping each other and solidified the change in the meaning of Appalachian Volunteer.

  Scheduled to take place from March 15 through March 20, 1965, the AV Spring Break Project had as its “primary concern” “the growth of an enrichment program whereby the students of the one- and two-room schools can gain new insights into their world.” Prior to the start of the program, however, the AV staff requested that all participants (most were from the University of Kentucky) meet in Berea for one day of “orientation to Eastern Kentucky and to Appalachian Volunteer techniques.” Only after the volunteers were properly trained did the AV staff send them into the hills.33

  The weeklong effort followed the pattern of virtually every other Appalachian Volunteer project in that it was designed “to bring the outside world . . . to these children.” At the Spruce School in Knox County, for example, a group of volunteers made much-needed repairs to the school building. They patched the leaking roof, glazed the windows, and painted the entire structure. They also constructed a rock wall around a flower garden and laid a stone path from the school to the water pump. One AV member, Larry Qualls, used the telescope he brought to the community to teach an astronomy lesson, and foreign exchange students spoke about their countries. Similarly, volunteers at the Ligon School in Floyd County and the Bruin School in Elliott County focused on the basics, including spelling, geography, history, and science, because, as one volunteer argued, that was what was needed.34

  An examination of some of the Spring Break Project’s participants reveal emerging structural problems within the Appalachian Volunteers and the increasingly resistant attitudes of some of the mountaineers themselves. One of the exchange students who did foreign culture enrichment programs at a number of schools reported on the parents’ lack of involvement with their children’s education. “They sent their children to school,” he stated, “but they weren’t bothered by the happenings [there].” A second exchange student lamented the fact that the constant travel the project involved prevented him from meeting local people and also told the AV leaders that the parents were “terribly indifferent.” Unfortunately, he did not indicate whether they were indif
ferent to the school itself or to the Volunteer program. Still, given the information the Appalachian Volunteers had already gathered on mountaineer attitudes (including Charles Kuralt’s interviews), it is likely that their indifference was to the Volunteer program, especially since fewer and fewer AVs were themselves Appalachian.35

  Within the organization itself, reports indicated that the Appalachian Volunteers came up short in preparing the students for their weeklong projects. “I think if we had more information on the program,” one student volunteer exclaimed, “we would have absorbed more. In fact information on the whole project [was] needed especially as to what the community expects of the volunteers.” Other spring break volunteers echoed this sentiment. One declared that the Volunteers placed too much emphasis on the physical environment and not enough on the “socialogy [sic]” of the mountaineers. According to this individual, potential volunteers needed to have a better understanding of the norms and mores of the people with whom they would be working. Another added that the program would be more beneficial if the volunteers knew the education level of the children and what the teachers really wanted in terms of help.36